Yesterday I invited dialogue about supersessionism. My invitation, like many of the questions I pose on Twitter, was a response to things already tweeted.

It wasn’t planned out and not fully thought through.

And at the end of the day, I got some heat for this.

1/

An invitation to discuss Christian/Jewish dynamics, particularly one that asks for perspectives on a supersessionist interpretive lens, deserves more caution than a casual “don’t be antisemitic” warning at the end.

That was the critique, and I’m taking it seriously.

2/

It boils down to this:

A blanket invite to tweet about supersessionism can stir up antisemitism, just like a blanket invite to tweet about theories of white superiority (even if you disagree w/them) can and most likely will stir up racism and expressions of white supremacy.

3/

Ask all of Twitter, “tell me what you think about XYZ,” when XYZ is contentious or a source of harm may not be a safe invitation to dialogue.

This is a global public square.

Sometimes our silos make it easy to think we’re having hallway conversations when we’re really not.

4/

Christians need practice at thinking through our religious identities in relation to other traditions, as well as our capacities for inflicting harm—intentionally or not.

But I’m not sure that hosting them in a global public square is the most sensible way of going about it.

5/

Twitter isn’t a safe place to have a casual chat about antisemitism.

That should be obvious to us all by now.

6/

This thread doesn’t have a simple conclusion or a failsafe solution to the problem of how to have conversations across lines of difference on the internet.

It’s just an invitation to reflection.

And maybe the prompt for new critiques about other things I’m missing.

7/7